Fight and Flight

“Together, we might be able to do dangerous subversive things, mischievous things.”1 Such is Andy Merrifield’s opening promise in his recent book Magi-cal Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination. Merrifield situates the work between two poles of people: those who are more or less orthodox Marxists and those who are Marxists but don’t know it. Thus, despite the fact that Merrifield toys with central Marxist tenets, he avoids any notion of third-way rhetoric; Merrifield’s arguments are unapologetically Marxist, and his attempt to shake the tradition from within requires some working knowledge of Marx’s texts. This is not because Merrifield’s arguments are obscure. On the contrary, he is to be commended for how deftly he has condensed a wide range of difficult source material. Magical Marxism is a joy for the reader, and Merrifield’s broad attempt to inject some affirmation into the critical negativity of Marxism is reflected in his prose.